LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 2IQ 



B. Turnbull, esq., of Lincoln s Inn, barrister-at-law, says, for 

 instance, in his Introduction to Southwell : There was re 

 sident at Uxendon, near Harrow-on-the-Hill, in Middlesex, a 

 Catholic family of the name of Bellamy whom [which] South 

 well was in the habit of visiting and providing with religious 

 instruction when he exchanged his ordinary [ordinarily] close 

 confinement for a purer atmosphere. (p. xxii.) Again (p. xxii.), 

 He had, in this manner, for six years, pursued, with very great 

 success, the objects of his mission, when these were abruptly 

 terminated by his foul betrayal into the hands of his enemies in 

 1592. We should like to have Mr. Turnbull explain how the 

 objects of a mission could be terminated by a betrayal, however 

 it might be with the mission itself. From the many similar 

 flowers in the Introduction to Mather s Providences/ by Mr. 

 George Offor (in whom, we fear, we recognise a countryman), 

 we select the following : It was at this period when [that,] 

 oppressed by the ruthless hand of persecution, our Pilgrim 

 Fathers, threatened with torture and death, succumbed not to 

 man, but trusting on [in] an almighty arm, braved the dangers 

 of an almost unknown ocean, and threw themselves into the 

 arms of men called savages, who proved more beneficent than 

 national Christians. To whom or what our Pilgrim Fathers 

 did succumb, and what national Christians are, we leave, with 

 the song of the Sirens, to conjecture. Speaking of the Pro 

 vidences, Mr. Offor says, that they faithfully delineate the state 

 of public opinion two hundred years ago, the most striking 

 feature being an implicit faith in the power of the [in-]visible 

 world to hold visible intercourse with man : not the angels to 

 bless poor erring mortals, but of demons imparting power to 

 witches and warlocks to injure, terrify, and destroy a sentence 

 which we defy any witch or warlock, though he were Michael 

 Scott himself, to parse with the astutest demonic aid. On 

 another page, he says of Dr. Mather, that he was one of the 

 first divines who discovered that very many strange events, 

 which were considered preternatural, had occurred in the course 

 of nature or by deceitful juggling ; that the Devil could not 

 speak English, nor prevail with Protestants; the smell of herbs 

 alarms the Devil ; that medicine drives out Satan ! We do 

 not wonder that Mr. Offor put a mark of exclamation at the 

 end of this surprising sentence, but we do confess our astonish 

 ment that the vermilion pencil of the proof-reader suffered it 

 to pass unchallenged. Leaving its bad English out of the 

 question, we find, on referring to Mather s text, that he was 



